Girl with a Pearl Earring Read Online Free Page B

“Good morning, madam.”
    She frowned and I realized I should have let her speak first. I would have to take more care with her.
    “Tanneke has taken you round the house?” she said.
    “Yes, madam.”
    “Well, then, you will know what to do and you will do it.” She hesitated, as if at a loss for words, and it came to me that she knew little more about being my mistress than I did about being her maid. Tanneke had probably been trained by Maria Thins and still followed her orders, whatever Catharina said to her.
    I would have to help her without seeming to.
    “Tanneke has explained that besides the laundry you want me to go for the meat and fish, madam,” I suggested gently.
    Catharina brightened. “Yes. She will take you when you finish with the washing here. After that you will go every day yourself. And on other errands as I need you,” she added.
    “Yes, madam.” Iwaited. When she said nothing else I reached up to pull a man’s linen shirt from the line.
    Catharina stared at the shirt. “Tomorrow,” she announced as I was folding it, “I will show you upstairs where you are to clean. Early—first thing in the morning.” Before I could reply she disappeared inside.
    After I brought in the laundry I found the iron, cleaned it, and set it in the fire to heat. I had just begun ironing when Tanneke came and handed me a shopping pail. “We’re going to the butcher’s now,” she said. “I’ll need the meat soon.” I had heard her clattering in the cooking kitchen and had smelled parsnips roasting.
    Out in front Catharina sat on the bench, with Lisbeth on a stool by her feet and Johannes asleep in a cradle. She was combing Lisbeth’s hair and searching for lice. Next to her Cornelia and Aleydis were sewing. “No, Aleydis,” Catharina was saying, “pull the thread tight, that’s too loose. You show her, Cornelia.”
    I had not thought they could all be so calm together.
    Maertge ran over from the canal. “Are you going to the butcher’s? May I go too, Mama?”
    “Only if you stay with Tanneke and mind her.”
    I was glad that Maertge came with us. Tanneke was still wary of me, but Maertge was merry and quick and that made it easier for us to be friendly.
    I asked Tanneke how long she had worked for Maria Thins.
    “Oh, many years,” she said. “A few before master and young mistress were married and came to live here. I started when I was no older than you. How old are you, then?”
    “Sixteen.”
    “I began when I was fourteen,” Tanneke countered triumphantly. “Half my life I’ve worked here.”
    I would not have said such a thing with pride. Her work had worn her so that she looked older than her twenty-eight years.
    The Meat Hall was just behind the Town Hall, south and to the west of Market Square. Inside were thirty-two stalls—there had been thirty-two butchers in Delft for generations. It was busy with housewives and maids choosing, bartering and buying for their families, and men carrying carcasses back and forth. Sawdust on the floor soaked up blood and clung to shoes and hems of dresses. There was a tang of blood in the air that always made me shiver, though at one time I had gone there every week and ought to have grown used to the smell. Still, I was pleased to be in a familiar place. As we passed between the stalls the butcher we used to buy our meat from before my father’s accident called out to me. I smiled at him, relieved to see a face I knew. It was the first time I had smiled all day.
    It was strange to meet so many new people and see so many new things in one morning, and to do so apart from all the familiar things that made up my life. Before, if I met someone new I was always surrounded by family and neighbors. If I went to a new place I was with Frans or my mother or father and felt no threat. The new was woven in with the old, like the darning in a sock.
    Frans told me not long after he began his apprenticeship that he had almost run away, not from the hard work,